59. Little Iva & Her Band: “When I Needed You”

Miracle MIR 02 (A), February 1961

Nothing to do with Little Eva of The Loco-Motion fame; in February 1961, she was still babysitting for Goffin and King in New York. No, this “Little Iva” is the Miracle label’s artistic director, former member of the Rayber Voices, and Berry Gordy’s second wife: Raynoma Liles Gordy, otherwise universally known as “Miss Ray”. Not sure what the need was for this, her only solo single, to be released under a pseudonym, or why the record was made under the Little Iva name rather than her universally-applied sobriquet of “Miss Ray”.

Anyway, this is actually a nice bit of doo-wop balladry. Miss Ray (or “Iva”, or whatever) had a decent voice, as shown by her outings with the Rayber Voices, and she carries off a lead vocal reasonably well despite a few ropey moments. As with the previous Miracle Records single recorded under the auspices of Miss Ray, Don’t Feel Sorry For Me by Jimmy Ruffin, there are deliberately no backing vocals on this one, and again, like Don’t Feel Sorry For Me and its B-side, it’s to the detriment of the record since its tentative lead singer’s flaws are exposed and magnified by the lack of cover.

There’s definitely the germ of an excellent song here, even if it doesn’t ever really take off; there are definite shades of Smokey Robinson, and the chorus sounds like it might have been better suited to a full girl group delivery, virtually calling out for a lush backing vocal, even a call-and-response structure; alternatively, you can imagine Mary Wells absolutely going to town on this. Instead, it’s more a question of what might have been; it’s nice, but it’s a few missing ingredients short of being elevated above the inessential.

Apparently no stock copies of this single were ever manufactured, let alone released (see the “Comments” section below). Whatever the case, it’s regrettable that this single’s utter commercial failure meant no more Motown singles for Miss Ray; the Miracle label, which had been set up in part to allow her some creative freedom, never had a hit, and it appears no further Little Iva records were sanctioned for release with the imprint struggling to break other artists. An indispensible member of the Motown backroom staff during the crucial first years, she was also an arranger and largely-unheralded performer (both vocally with the Rayber Voices, and as a keyboardist, playing key Ondioline parts on a number of early Motown singles). As her marriage to Berry Gordy fell apart, she first moved to New York to head up Motown’s new NYC office, and then left the company altogether in 1964. A second stint with Motown in the late Sixties and early Seventies followed, again with Raynoma in a number of administrative and support roles (including as PA to Diana Ross during the latter’s relationship with Gordy); she went with Motown when the company made the move to Los Angeles, and was eventually fired in the mid-Eighties, bouncing between a number of jobs and releasing a controversial tell-all book, Berry, Me and Motown, in 1990.

This song is one of those for which an original master couldn’t be located for The Complete Motown Singles: Volume 1; the version in the collection had to be dubbed from a 45rpm 7″ single, and it shows in a high level of distortion when Miss Ray sings the consonants “s” and “f”. A pity.

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19 thoughts on “59. Little Iva & Her Band: “When I Needed You””

We had a discussion about Miss Ray’s Miracle release on Soulful Detroit Forum. Those of us who were best able to make educated guesses (including Ron Murphy (now deceased), or put together what we heard back in the day with our knowledge of the pressing evidence, came to the conclusion that Miracle 2 not only went unreleased and unpressed (as Miracle 3 and 4 by Gino Parks and Andre Williams), -but it was only pressed up in mid 1963. This was said to have been done in a very limited pressing job (maybe 100), requested and paid for by Raynoma, herself, to be used to market herself as a writer, from her position running The Jobete Music New York office, together with Eddie Singleton. The pressings were made at a completely different plant from all the other Miracle Records pressing jobs.

It was interesting to me that there was NO copy of her “release” in The Motown Record Corp. Record File, nor in The Jobete Music Record File, during the entire 1970s and early 1980s (when I had access to them). There were also no copies of Miracle 3 and Miracle 4. All three had been “slated” for release (had made the future release lists), but not sure if release dates were scheduled. There WERE copies of Soul Records 35019 (Frank Wilson), and VIP 25006 (Andantes), presumably 2 of the 6 pressing plant test pressings (which were the only records of those catalogue numbers known to have been cut).

I think that Berry changed his mind, and squashed the project to release her record, and that the recording was NOT a finished one. Background vocals probably would have been added, had he intended to market it. It think she just got the tape that was left “in the can”, and had it pressed up, despite the fact that it wasn’t “commercially finished”.

Fascinating stuff, thank you! Why was it squashed, though? Did Mr and Mrs Gordy fall out in the interim, meaning he was no longer interested in pushing her stuff? (If so, it would also go some way to explaining why the next two Miracle Records singles were also scrapped, until Motown could take proper control of the label roster?)

I think that information (not the “vitriolic” description, that was me distilling someone else’s comments) was from the liner notes to The Complete Motown Singles: Volume 1. (I think, anyway. I’ll have to check when I get home – I wrote that back in October 2009, not this year).

EDIT: No it wasn’t!

Anyway, whichever source I got it from, they stated she’d written a warts-and-all book in 2003 – I assumed they were talking about two separate books, given the discrepancy in dates between that and The Untold Story.

(Although the TCMS notes do often follow the Motown party line, and the “official” position statement in 1990 was that Miss Ray’s book was “Trashy and false. Raynoma is an opportunist…. What did she really have to do with building Motown—with Michael Jackson, Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder? She’s trying to capitalize on other people’s success”, so it might well have been their put-down. Like I say, I’ll check when I get home tonight.)

Right, it definitely wasn’t from those notes! I got the “2003” thing from an online biography (that I helfpully now can’t find), which is obviously an error. (I’m a lawyer by day, you’d think I’d pick up on something like that. It’s astonishing they let me out in public, really.)

Anyway. The “vitriolic” description was a one-word summary of the way that article described what I thought was a second book. Now, I’m not 100% sure that it can’t also be used fairly accurately to refer to Berry, Me & Motown – several reviews across the Internet, including a few written at the time (“a spotty, often bitter, and sometimes self- serving memoir”, said Entertainment Weekly; the Free Press called it “a bitter, finger-pointing work that may be the most biting and controversial book yet about Detroit’s famed record label”) cast it in a rather bad light. Still, I think while Berry, Me & Motown paints a fairly unedifying picture of several key Motown characters, “vitriolic” is putting it a bit strongly.

Accordingly, I’ll edit the piece to remove the date error and avoid future confusion. Thanks for the tip-off, Gordon!

That’s OK — much better. Now here’s a question… play Ray’s “When I Needed You”, then Jimmy Ruffin’s Miracle B-side “Heart”. Similar in one respect (in melody, tune, but obviously not in tempo) and is one vocalled, perhaps, over a slowed-down backing track of a PART of the other? — Opinions welcome.

Why a new label? Why have Miss Ray run it? My theory is Berry saw this as a way to grow without burdening him, since he was so busy. He would produce Tamla and Motown material, she would produce Miracle material. Another option would be to delegate producing duties which he was not quite ready to give up, or didn’t trust anybody enough. A common problem for small companies experiencing exponential growth. He would soon bite the bullet and benefit immensely.

“Fascinating stuff, thank you! Why was it squashed, though? Did Mr and Mrs Gordy fall out in the interim, meaning he was no longer interested in pushing her stuff?”

No, – I’m sure that Berry and Miss Ray hadn’t had a falling out as early as 1961. However, people who were at Motown at the time have stated that by mid 1963, when Berry “sent” her to New York to run Jobete Music’s offices there, he was trying to “get her out of the way”. She probably wanted the chance to operate away from him, and probably welcomed the opportunity. Clearly, she wanted to continue to operate with Motown, and participate in the firm’s growth. By mid 1964, when Berry wouldn’t support her office with funding, she took what she felt was her branch’s proper right (by having Mary Wells’ “My Guy” pressed up, selling the records on The East Coast (competing with Motown’s distributors) and keeping the cash for running her office. That led to the divorce and her removal from the company.

Well … “perfect pitch” means the ability to identify the pitch of any note out of context – not the vocal chops to sing perfectly in tune under pressure. If you wake someone up in the middle of the night and say “sing me an A”, a person with perfect pitch will be able to do it, but if you make them strain for a high note in the middle of a hard phrase they’re no more likely to hit it in tune than anyone else. The gift for hearing absolute pitches doesn’t go hand in hand with the gift for vocal control. So Miss Ray probably really did have perfect pitch.

Also, thanks so much for clearing up the Little Iva vs. Little Eva mystery for me. I guess the pseudonym was a variation on the “answer song” marketing ploy. Now if I can just get myself straightened out on Ivy Jo & Ivory Joe!

Anyways this was not a bad song at all. Who ever says background vocals aren’t need on any song is a liar. Background singers don’t get much respect, but without them most songs wouldn’t sound nearly as good. Singing background also isn’t an easy thing to do. This song definitely needed backing vocals. I agree with Mr. Nixon when he says this song would’ve been better for a girl group. As I was listening to the song I couldn’t help but think how great of a song this would’ve been if the Ronnettes had recorded it.

Before i bought the Complete Motown Singles volume 1 i had downloaded this from iTunes because i liked it that much lol and the fact she wrote it for Berry is also a nice touch to the song. The Little Iva thing sorta different shoulda been just Miss Ray lol6/10

Perfect pitch my Aunt Fanny! The song itself was nice, early 60s teenage-love fare. It just needed a singer with more…umm..talent. At least she didn’t pull out that damn Ondioline/clavichord thing that pervaded most of the Marvellettes first album.

The almost obligatory use of the standard bridge that starts on IV and ends with II7 V is getting a bit old here – it’s making my mouth water uncontrollably for the eventual arrival of the high priestess of bridge-writing, Valerie Simpson.

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